Why do presidents cooperate with Woodward on books about them?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
In 1974, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon with their reporting on Watergate.
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/09/23/art.book.jpg caption="The cover art for Bob Woodward's latest book: 'Obama's Wars'"]
But Bob Woodward was just getting started on the occupants of the White House.
In 1994, he wrote "The Agenda" about President Clinton, in which he revealed disputes, temper tantrums and heated debates in the president's second year in office.
In 2004 he wrote "Plan of Attack" about Pres. George W. Bush in which he famously revealed how CIA Director George Tenet told Bush it was a "slam dunk case" that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.
In 2006, he wrote "State of Denial" - also about Bush - and revealed how the president failed to tell the truth about how badly the Iraq war was going.
Woodward's 16 books are all bestsellers. He's a writer/reporter who stays on the story until he has something no one else has.
It used to be said the worst news you could get at the office is "60 Minutes is on the phone and wants to talk to you." The idea being that no good would come of a conversation with them.
The same applies to Bob Woodward.
So you have to wonder, looking at his body of work, why anyone would open the door to him when he knocks and says he wants to write a book about the president. But that's exactly what the Obama administration did.
The result is Woodward's latest, "Obama's Wars."
How good or bad it will be for the Obama White House remains to be seen. But it's too late to worry about that now.
Here’s my question to you: Why do presidents choose to cooperate with Bob Woodward when he wants to write a book about them?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Do you feel like recession is over?
(PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
It's unlikely there were all that many champagne corks popping across the country when we learned this week that the recession officially ended more than a year ago.
And maybe that's because it doesn't feel like the recession has ended…not at all.
A new Gallup Poll shows that 88 percent of those surveyed say now is a "bad time" to find a quality job.
That number is as high as it was one year ago... and higher than it was at this time in 2008, when the recession was under way. Only 55 percent felt this way in 2007, before the recession started.
The bottom line is Americans are waiting for the jobs to come back. It may be a very long wait, and, in fact, a lot of the lost jobs will never come back.
The national unemployment rate is 9.6 percent, and there are no signs it's going to improve significantly for a while. Since the recession started - more than seven million jobs have been lost. Almost two and a half million homes have been repossessed.
But the National Bureau of Economic Research says the recession, which began in December of 2007, ended in June of 2009. This makes the 18-month long recession the longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression.
Add in weak economic data in the past few months and concerns about a possible double dip recession are growing.
According to CNNMoney.com, a group of top economists say there's a 25 percent risk of a double dip recession in the next year. That's up from a 15 percent chance just six months ago.
Here’s my question to you: Do you feel like the recession is over?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
@jackcafferty on Twitter
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